Minister of Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony yesterday awarded two Phase Two Sub Lot contracts to Bholonauth Contracting and Engineering Services and Howard’s Construction for the completion of the boundary fence and the ticket booths at the Track and Field facility at Leonora. The Phase Two, Lot Four contract which was initially awarded to JP Mangal, will now be subdivided between the two construction firms in order to accelerate its completion.
Anthony acknowledged that J.P Mangal’s firm did not honour their contract in a specific time frame thus forcing the hand of the Ministry to terminate the agreement.
“Some of the contractors have not delivered in terms of the time line of their contracts” Anthony revealed.” In this particular case J.P Mangal, we had to terminate him and that has cost us and we have him in court so we could recover monies that have been given to him” said Anthony
“Nevertheless we have broken down that big contract into smaller contracts so we will award those portions with different contractors, we feel by doing this we will accelerate the completion of the fence which is very essential as we move forward with the project “Anthony added.
According to Anthony, the new contractors have been given specific deadlines to complete their task at what he dubbed “the current flagship programme of the ministry”.
Said Anthony “This is our current flagship programme of the ministry and if we don’t secure the perimeter in time this field can be under threat, the grass that is planted here is a special type of grass therefore we need to secure the perimeter so that is why we have given these contractors very specific deadlines to complete these works”.
The Minister of Sport also intimated that once this year’s budget has passed, the money which his ministry will receive will go towards the erection of stands which will seat approximately 8000 to 10,000 spectators.
Despite being reluctant to disclose a specific completion date of the project, Anthony opined that barring any setbacks, the entire project should be completed next year. Works to the project first commenced in late 2010.
